By Joe Carter, The Gospel Coalition
In a recent interview in which she announced she had joined the Episcopal Church, Rachel Held Evans said,
Just about every denomination in the American church— including many evangelical denominations — is seeing a decline in numbers, so if it’s a competition, then we’re all losing, just at different rates.
Many Americans, both within and outside the church, share Evans perception of the decline of denominations. But is it true? Are most denominations truly seeing a decline in numbers?
Before we answer the question, we should clarify what is meant by “decline.” We could, for instance, say that Protestantism has been on the decline since the 1970s. That would be true. We could also say there are now more Protestants today than there were in the 1970s. That too would be true.
The fact is that the percentage of people identifying as Protestant has declined since the 1970s while the total number of Protestants has increased (62 percent of Americans identified as Protestant in 1972 and only 51 percent did so in 2010). Yet because of the population increase in the U.S., there were 28 million more Protestants in 2010 than in 1972.
So did Protestantism in America decline since the 1970s? Yes (percentwise) and no (total numbers).
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Interesting. When he looks at the conservative Churches like the Southern Baptists, he says “lets not look at the last several years (in which they have been losing members) but rather at the last several decades.
This is like marriage equality opponents saying “we won 31 state votes in a row” while ignoring the last 4 votes (they lost all of) and the polling and other data about societal attitudes on the subject. This allows them to feel they aren’t losing as badly as they really are because of earlier successes.
This analysis of the membership of liberal/non literalist vs conservative/literalist denominations has the same feel;
“I dont like how it looks now. lets look farther back and include years when we were stronger. It makes our opponents problems very clear, and downplays our own while ignoring the real time situation on the ground.”
Just to pick one of the conservative denominations listed, its worth reading The Future of the PCA by Marshall C. St John, June 2, 2010 in The Aquila Report. It lists the reasons, most of them demographic, that will affect the membership of the conservative denominations just as they have the progressive ones. We are seeing it in the SBC already. Theology has played a part, but its mainly been demographics, and those demographics are catching up with the conservative churches also.
Gene,
Though you use quote marks to attribute thoughts to the author, none of these statements are actually from the author of the article, but merely your eisegesis. How do you completely miss the fact that over the last 50 years the liberal mainline churches have all lost substantial percentages of their membership (anywhere from 20-50%), whereas conservative denominations have by and large gained in that same time period by amounts up to 1000%? Certainly there are exceptions to the rule, but the overall trend is undeniable. If this were the stock market, and you were being asked to pick from a list of stocks which had been winners and which losers over the last 50 years, I doubt you’d have much trouble differentiating the two.
In this case, looking strictly at numbers, it’s hard to quibble with the author’s overall point, in my opinion.
The PCA has more missionaries in the field on accident, than the pcusa does on purpose.
high % growth numbers, when one starts from a low number, are easy.
The author did just what I said he did, which is the same thing conservatives are doing with votes and public opinion on marriage equality. he is looking back on the glory days to make the current data for the conservatives less uncomfortable.
the demographics that were the biggest cause of numerical decline of the mainlines are being copied by the conservatives, and they are beginning their decline.
His overall point, fails, for it fails to present a great deal of important data.
When picking a stock by the way, always remember the good brokers credo “Past performance is no guarantee of future performance”. A broker who said “lets look at the performance of this stock for the last 50 years and show how it had outperformed others, but, lets not focus on the last 8 or so.” would not be a broker anyone would want.
One of the biggest lies to PCUSA tells to itself is that it is part of this greater end of Christendom narrative, that all boats are in a falling tide, or that in a post modern world millennials just do not do ‘church’ .
No. the faith and church remain as strong and vibrant and healthy as it ever was. Dynamic as it ever was. God is not mocked, nor His guidance in Holy Scriptures. The price paid remains very heavy. As the numbers do show.
there are several things that i would disagree with.
the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has lost its liberal element, that’s going to reduce its membership
the Southern Baptists are still losing their liberals, while this continues so will their losses and there are plenty that still need to leave – hey, the ABC welcomes you with open arms.
With the Reformed Church and the ABC, their losses are just starting because the denominations recently weakening their position on homosexuality. with the ABC, watch west virginia, Michigan, INdiana and Kentucky and see what happens. they have already lost most of their churches in the West. The whole western “Convention” broke off, many of the churches returned, but most of them did not